


Blind Side Tackle References

by LonghornLetters



Series: Stony NFL AU [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:55:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23387734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LonghornLetters/pseuds/LonghornLetters
Summary: This is not a part of the narrative.  This is meant as a quick reference for some of the more jargon-y elements of Blind Side Tackle so you don’t have to go running around Google trying to track stuff down.  Each chapter of this will correspond to the chapters of the main story.
Series: Stony NFL AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1682194
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

In the huddle during the game

  * The o-line - these are the dudes up front on the offensive side of the ball. They’re the ones who engage with the defensive line so the quarterback can actually make the play develop.
  * Creating creases - creases are the little gaps the offensive line will open up during a running play. These gaps allow the running back to slip through the line and actually gain yardage. Creating creases for the running backs is a more efficient way to gain yards than doing an end run around where you run to the sideline before you turn upfield to start gaining yards. These sorts of runs rely on everyone doing their job though. The running back needs to be patient, but ready to roll. The members of the o-line all need to take responsibility for their assignments. So basically like any play. :)



The Pistol Formation

  * This is a “hybrid” formation that seems (in my admittedly amateur opinion) to be pretty popular at both the college and pro level. The quarterback doesn’t line up as far back as he would it the shotgun, but he’s not directly under center either, hence calling it a hybrid formation.
  * The thing that makes this so popular lies in its versatility. Once the snap happens, it’s super easy for the quarterback to turn a play out of the pistol into a running play or a pass play, depending on the defense




	2. Chapter 2

The NFL Combine (The Combine)

  * This is the annual pre-Draft talent scouting showcase.
  * It’s a week-long media circus where prospective draftees get interviewed by teams, the media, and psychologists.
  * Players also go through intelligence testing, physical measuring and testing before they *finally* get on the field to run through position-specific drills that showcase their skills.
  * Managers, coaches, GMs and the like use this week to network, sell each other on their clubs and players, and generally press the flesh.



The Biletnikoff

  * This is the award for the top receiver in the college game. 



National and Bletso Affiliation

  * The vast majority of NFL teams don’t do their own in-house scouting at the Combine.
  * They contract with one of two organizations, the National or the Bletso.
  * These two organizations churn out *detailed* reports on every single player working out at the combine. 
  * The miniscule minority of teams who don’t affiliate themselves with one of these organizations claim being independent allows them to do what’s best for their clubs.
  * The teams who contract with one of these organizations claim it allows them to get unbiased information on more players than an in-house team could develop.



The Cybex

  * Cybex Isokinetic Testing is a means to measure the maximum strength of a joint through its available range of motion.
  * This is one of the first tests Combine prospects go through because the organizers won’t let you on the field for the workouts if you’re injured.



The Shotgun

  * This is the “classic” passing formation.
  * Because the quarterback isn’t under center, it’s much easier for him to drop back and air out the ball in a mid- or long-range throw.
  * The major downside, of course, is you're snapping the ball seven yards back, so you've got to make all that distance up before you're gaining positive yardage, but that's why it's the go-to for longer range plays.



OTAs

  * Organized Team Activities
  * These are the pre-summer training camp activities that can range from optional to strongly encouraged to required.
  * Rookies (like Steve) would have to go through certain mandatory OTAs to help them get acclimated to the league, to the amount of money they’re about to be responsible for, and what their rights are as members of the NFL Player’s Association.
  * OTAs are also the first place where cuts will be made to start whittling down draftees, undrafted free agents, and trades to fit in with returners to make the final roster of 53 for Week 1.




	3. Chapter 3

Two-a-Days

  * These are summer practices that, as the name would suggest, happen twice a day, usually first thing in the morning and then late in the afternoon, after the heat of the day.
  * There’s an element of conditioning to these practices because the team is usually trying to work back up to regular season stamina and fitness.



The General Manager (GM)

  * This is the head of a team’s front office.
  * They have final yea/nay power over payment, contracts, hiring, and firing for everyone from the waterboy up to the head coach.
  * The GM has the same power over a team as a CEO would over a company. 




	4. Chapter 4

On the Board

  * This is the practice of drawing up/drawing out plays that goes beyond the basic setup you’d find in a playbook.
  * This is a chance to work through how you’d respond to the defense’s response to your initial formation and to talk through how a play develops.
  * Working on the board is a lot like when scientists work on simulations and models before they start working with the real thing.
  * Quarterbacks will use board work to plot through how to go through their reads (do I throw to my first, second, third choice), how to handle a play breaking down, and even how to respond to a turnover (yikes)
  * This is one of the fundamental ways quarterbacks build reputations for themselves as strategists and playmakers.
  * Time spent on the board outside of a game means a quarterback is much more likely to keep their head no matter what happens during a game.



Guard

  * The guards are the two players on either side of the center on the offensive line.
  * They have a tremendously important role in two ways:
    * They create seams and creases for the running backs on a run play (see ch. 1 for more on that!)
    * They work with the center and the two offensive tackles to create the pocket a quarterback throws out of on a passing play. 
  * This position requires a lot of strength, but it also requires the skill to keep the structure of a play long enough for the “skill” players to do their job
    * Also, please don’t get me started on “skill” players...every man on that field has skill.



Cap Space

  * Oh, salaries. The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the NFL Player’s Association and the 32 teams in the league sets the maximum value of a team’s players.
  * The newly approved 2020 CBA has set the salary cap at $198.2 million per club per year.
  * This means a team can’t be paying all its players more than $198.2 million per year.
  * If they do go over, a team can’t sign anyone new until they bring themselves back under the cap either through renegotiating contracts or through releasing player(s).
  * On teams that have a lot of well-known veterans (think the Patriots), they have way less wiggle room to either raise someone’s salary or to sign a new big-name player.
    * This is why you’ll get huge stars like JJ Watt who’ll have contracts that pay out slowly over time because then a club still has the money to sign other quality players.
  * So someone like Thor, who’s good but not at a “skill” position, might step aside from an old team so that they can have some more money to sign a player they might need. 



Blackjacks

  * Holy Jesus, y’all.
  * My father-in-law signed with the Jets waaaay back in the day, and he said this was the way his strength and conditioning coach ended every workout. Every. Workout.
  * So you start out by doing 20 pushups and one sit up. Not a crunch. A full ass sit up.
  * Then you do 19 pushups and two sit ups. 
  * Then you do 18 pushups and three sit ups. (you see where this is going, I’m sure)
  * The last round is one pushup and 20 sit ups.
  * FIL said that if his strength and conditioning coach didn’t like the way everyone did a round, he’d make them do that whole round again. So imagine being out in the middle of this hellscape and your coach doesn’t think you’re doing it well enough.




	5. Chapter 5

WAGS

  * The wives and girlfriends section.
  * Teams will often reserve a block of tickets together for wives and girlfriends to sit together at games.
  * There’s a real special sorority that forms among these ladies, and this is another way for them to socialize.



3-4 Nickel Package

  * Okay so when we’re thinking about the defense, we want to consider the front (the numbers) and the secondary (the “read”)
  * So a 3-4 defense means you have three big defensive linemen up front and they’re backed up by 4 linebackers whose main job is to get past the offensive line as quick as possible to disrupt the play.
  * A 3-4 read up front creates a LOT of questions for the offense because a 3-4 means the defense can show the offense a lot of different looks and disrupt the play a lot of different ways.
  * So behind the defensive front, most teams nowadays run in some form of either a nickel or dime package with their defensive secondary. The nickel package offers the defense a lot of immediate flexibility once a play begins because they can cover the flexible looks offenses present more easily. 



Fourth Down Attempt Rates

  * Going for it on fourth down (instead of punting the ball away) is a big topic for discussion with any offense.
  * When do we go for it based on the score? At what field position is it “safe”? How often? What role does the clock play?
  * Here’s an illustration for how these questions all come into play: I remember the first time I was consciously aware of a team deciding to go for it on 4th down was in the 1996 Big 12 Championship when UT went for it on 4th and 1 against Nebraska late in the 4th quarter. The fact that UT was only ahead by three points, they were on their own 28 yard line, and the fact that Nebraska’s defense came into that game with a reputation as assbeaters all seemed like really good reasons to punt the ball away. Nope. John Mackovic left his quarterback James Brown in with a “come to run” tag on the roll left play he’d called. Basically, Brown was to fake a handoff then run the ball himself using the left side of the field to get the first down yardage. After the snap, Brown saw a wide-the-fuck-open Derek Lewis and threw him a beautiful pass that dropped right into his hands. Lewis gained 61 yards, all the way to the Nebraska 10 yard line on that reception. Needless to say, my dad and I were dancing around the living room hooting and hollering. We were so thrilled.
    * If you watch the play, you can tell he’s watching himself run on the jumbotron because he protects the ball well before he’s tackled without actually turning around to see the defender coming. 




	6. Chapter 6

Yoga’s becoming a bigger and bigger thing in NFL training regimes because coaches are starting to realize the kind of strength and conditioning that comes from doing yoga as well as the mental health benefits of what is, often, a whole team practice. 

Y’all. Y’all. Cuts in the NFL are brutal. Most of the time you won’t even see the head coach. Your position coach will be like “yeah, thanks, you’ve been cut” and you hand in your playbook, clean out your locker, and you’re out. The season the Texans were on Hard Knocks the only thing Bill O’Brien (sksksksk) said to one of the guys they cut was “thank you, but we’re gonna go ahead and let you go.”

One of my best friends is a football coach, and he talks about the “silent five in any locker room” as he calls them often. He says one of the biggest parts of a coach’s job is to teach boys how to be men, and that includes compassionate empathy. 

Last thing...please understand that the NFL has a VERY complicated relationship with LGBT charities and outreach. I’ve boiled it down to kneejerk reactions here because that’s the point we’re at in the narrative. It’s heartening to see the progress they make every season with pulling their heads out of their own hind ends, but they’ve still got a ways to go. 


	7. Chapter 7

No real football stuff in chapter seven, so this is just here to take up space so the chapter count stays right :)

See y'all in chapter 8!


	8. Chapter 8

A few things to note about pre-season pro football:

  * These four games serve different purposes depending on who you are to a team:
    * Roster mainstays (the household names like JJ Watt and Drew Brees) use these games to either shake off the cobwebs and get back up to full speed or to test themselves at full speed following a major injury.
    * Rookies who are fairly certain in their roster spots (like Steve and Sam) use these games as gameday experience. The NFL game moves FAST, much faster than college, so rookies need to learn how to play at that speed. It’s a good way to solidify who you are in the team’s offense/defense schemes and to get yourself on the scene. Patrick Mahomes, for example, solidified his spot as Alex Smith’s number two for Kansas City his rookie year. And hey look, Mahomes’ second season as the starter netted KC a Lombardi Trophy.
    * Rookies who are on the bubble of making the 53 man roster use these games to get themselves on the right side of that bubble. They need field time during these games to avoid relegation to the practice squad, or worse, getting cut entirely. This is most assuredly the spot I’ve put Scott Lang in. He wasn’t drafted till the 5th round. He doesn’t have the name recognition someone like Steve Rogers or even Sam Wilson has, so he wants to be in every snap he can AND he wants to be seen as someone who gets shit done when he’s in.
    * Undrafted free agents and undrafted rookies use these games as their last-ditch efforts to impress. They’re the ones most likely to do something...less intelligent because they’re low-key desperate to make it onto even a practice squad. These are the names that you’d see crop back up in the Canadian Football League (CFL) or who just end up leaving the field in favor of going back to their college team as a graduate assistant or going into coaching (usually at the high school level) or leaving the game entirely.
    * Coaches are, of course, using these games to do things like fine-tune offensive and defensive schemes and plans, figure out which packages work best in which situations, which interchangeable players (receivers, backs, linebackers, etc.) work best in combination with each other. All that oversight kind of thing.
  * The local affiliates handle broadcast and commentary for preseason games, so it’s hella slanted in favor of the hometown boys. But it’s also a chance for the locals to add in a lot more in terms of the team’s direction, prospects, goals, all that blah blah. 
    * This may surprise you, but not every team goes into the season with the goal of winning the Super Bowl. Teams are, by and large, realistic about who they are and what they can accomplish in a season with the personnel they’ve got. Case in point: when the Houston Texans came off their 2-14 season (hard yikes on that season), their stated goal for 2014 was to make the playoffs, but everyone knew their tacit goal was to not get the number one pick in the draft like they had in 2013. The locals are best able to articulate this in a way that doesn’t sound like they’re just shitting on the home side.



And now for the other stuff!

  * Winning the toss and deferring - this means you want the ball on offense to start the second half. This is an increasingly popular choice in both college and the pros because it means you get to start the second half on YOUR terms.
  * End-run plays - these are plays that involve the running back taking the ball and running horizontally to the sideline THEN turning upfield to gain positive yardage. It’s a lot of work for (sometimes) not a lot of gain because there’s a lot of time for the defense to pick up on what you’re doing and stop you.
  * Stepping downhill - this is when your offensive line steps back towards the quarterback. It seems counterintuitive...why would you let the defense get CLOSER to the quarterback?! Well, it creates some separation between the defensive line and the defensive secondary (the linebackers and cornerbacks and shit) and allows the offensive backs (receivers, tight ends, those guys) to get into the flats and actually run their routes.




	9. Chapter 9

The idea of “sharing the backlash” is real, unfortunately. 

  * In 2013, Chris Culliver said some incredibly awful things about how gay players were unwelcome in the NFL and that they should be required to wait at least ten years after they leave the league to come out. 
  * Another player, Brendan Ayanbadejo, who used his platform as a professional athlete to advocate for marriage equality, admitted that he estimated as many as half of the personnel working in the NFL would agree with Culliver, but that he’d been at least tangentially involved with encouraging four players to come out together because according to Ayanbadejo, “If they could share the backlash, it would be more positive.” 
  * His fears aren’t, as it turned out, unfounded. Several players who shared his passion for advocating for marriage equality and LGBT rights have claimed they were cut or traded as a result of their advocacy, and even after Roger Goodell _insisted_ that the NFL doesn’t discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation, rumors and suspicions persist that to be open about LGBT rights is the fastest way to find yourself traded.
  * Oh, and apparently even as recently as 2013, teams would ask prospects during interviews at the Combine if they “liked girls.” Players “couldn’t remember which teams asked them this,” which the New York AG viewed with enough suspicion (as most fans with two brain cells to rub together did), that they formally got involved.
  * From a 2013 New York Times article: “We’ve always, not only been amenable, but we have had policies that support that,” Goodell said. “We’ve shared that with the Attorney General just last week and I think they felt that we were doing the right things. That’s essentially what they are saying, ‘The N.F.L. is doing the right things.’ We sent out another communication to our clubs verifying the same information that we presented to the Attorney General. I think they are satisfied that we are doing the right things. This is something that is very important to us and we have the right policies in place to support it.”
    * Let’s be honest, if you have to say “we’re doing the right thing” this many times, you ain’t doing the right thing.




	10. Chapter 10

Not too terribly much this week...

Halftime in the NFL is seven and a half minutes, so you gotta get your shit together. Usually that seven and a half minutes is spent keeping loose, reviewing the first half, getting directions from coaches, and getting mentally set for the second half. As you see here...at least a bit.

The idea of a lunchpail style of team work ethic comes from Virginia Tech. They use this word as shorthand for being the team that’s willing to put in the reps on the unglamorous “blue collar” grind of football both in practice and on gameday. It seems to work quite well for them both in terms of on-field performance and off-field cohesion.

In the fumble, refs can’t call what they don’t see, and pretty much anything goes at the bottom of those turnover piles. Yes, that includes biting.


End file.
